Displacement and the public interest in Nigeria: contesting developmental rationales for displacement

Abstract

The displacement of urban households and livelihoods by state institutions is typically justified on the basis of the developmental purposes of land clearance, purportedly in the public interest. However conflicts around such displacement highlight both the contested nature of the 'public interest' and the unequal position that different urban actors are in to shape consensus about what this should constitute. This paper draws on research into the relationship between urban infrastructure development and displacement in Nigeria, to explore how actors negotiate their positions vis a vis displacement through a range of knowledge practices.Displacement and the public interest in Nigeria: Contesting the legitimacy of displacement through knowledge practices.The use of the 'public interest' as a criteria to determine the legitimacy of development induced displacement is widespread, but also problematic in view of both the multiple, and unequally positioned 'publics' involved, and of the contested visions of development which underlie notions of this notion.This tension is thrown into particular relief in the case of Nigeria, where, the notion of the public interest is placed at the heart of the Land Use Act of 1978, which is the chief legal instrument governing compulsory land acquisition (and thus development induced displacement) in the country. However this Act and its associated legal instruments lack clarity on what would constitute the public interest, beyond very broad criteria related to public ownership. This means that in practice the public interest nature of projects causing displacement is debated outside of the legal system, between actors in very different positions to articulate their positions.This paper draws on a research project focused on the linkages between urban infrastructure projects and displacement in Nigeria, to explore how groups involved urban infrastructure projects have used different knowledge practices to promote competing interpretations of the public interest nature of these projects. By 'knowledge practices' we mean the ways in which various actors use, control, and shape different forms of knowledge towards competing outcomes.

Original dataset on urban infrastructure related displacements in Nigeria: Insights from national and sub-national levels

“…Infrastructure-related displacements facilitated, ordered and/or enforced by state and non-state actors are on the rise in both the Global North and South [2 , 3 , 4] . Tens of millions of people, in particular vulnerable groups and the urban poor, are threatened/uprooted from their homes, lands, and trading places due to routine infrastructure projects or occasional ones associated with hosting of major cultural and sporting events.…”